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Penn State Transitions to Standardized Cleaning

About 100,000 students pursue their higher education at Penn State. The main campus, University Park, spreads across 7,343 acres with 947 buildings containing
21 million square feet of facility space. Over five years ago, the university set in motion a campus-wide transition to a more efficient and effective
cleaning program.

“We
call it a documented, standardized approach,” said Bill Markley, program supervisor of the custodial department. “This transition has been initiated
and executed independently, without assistance of any outside contractor or system.”

When Markley joined the university’s staff, he took up the primary goal of shepherding the transition to standardized and more efficient cleaning.
He spent a year researching new cleaning methods and equipment, ideal frequencies, and consulting with colleges and colleagues, as well as his
internal team. The goal was to have a successful transition and to keep customers happy.

“For all of our cleaning tasks, we went through ISSA Cleaning Times to find the most efficient method,” said Markley. “For example, backpack vacuums
have a 67 percent efficiency differential over upright vacuums.”

Prior to switching to backpack vacuums, Markley conducted a reeducation campaign with his staff about their benefits: efficiency, ergonomics, and the
ability to capture more airborne and surface-based contaminants. Then he gave his team the opportunity to test ProTeam® backpack vacuums and provide
feedback. In order to be adopted, all new equipment must achieve at least a 75 percent score from the staff.

“Cleaners are exposed to the most dirt and germs in a facility,” said Markley. “We showed them the ProTeam filter bags and explained that they will
be breathing fewer contaminants as they’re cleaning.”

“The win is hearing back from someone who was previously anti-backpack vacuum who has now bought in,” said Markley.

In order to create the smoothest possible transition, Markley kept open lines of communication with every stakeholder: university administration and
staff, his cleaning team, and their union. He encouraged his supervisors to be out in the field engaging the workforce with at least 50 percent
of their time and provided ongoing trainings. The team also held vacancies for the positions they hoped to eliminate, to ensure everyone still
remained on the team after the savings reduction.

“Based upon this efficiency and standardization project, a conservative estimate is that we will reduce our overall maintenance budget for labor and
equipment by six to eight percent.”

The transition will be complete in July 2017.

“Our customers are saying that the university has never looked cleaner,” said Markley.